Vaccines - What's next?

by Patrick Quanten

With the ongoing discussion surrounding inoculation programmes and vaccine safety and/or efficacy and in particular because of the yes-no type of discussions whereby one group is not listening at all to the opposition, I feel that it might be time to take stock of what has been achieved so far. Where do we stand on the vaccination controversy and can there ever be any progress in one or the other direction, preferably towards truth? In order to pinpoint the position we have arrived at it might be worthwhile to step back into the history of vaccinations first in order to evaluate this new growing opposition against vaccinations which is said to be a direct result of misinformation and scaremongering.

Health and medical scholars have described vaccination as one of the top ten achievements of public health in the 20th century. Yet, opposition to vaccination has existed as long as vaccination itself(indeed, the pre-vaccination practice of variolation came under criticism as well). Critics of vaccination have taken a variety of positions, including opposition to the smallpox vaccine in England and the United States in the mid to late 1800s, resulting in various anti-vaccination leagues, as well as more recent vaccination controversies such as those surrounding the safety and efficacy of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) immunization, the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and the use of a mercury-containing preservative called thimerosal.

Widespread smallpox vaccination began in the early 1800s, following Edward Jenner’s cowpox experiments, in which he showed that he could protect a child from smallpox if he infected him or her with lymph from a cowpox blister. Jenner’s ideas were novel for his time, however, and they were met with immediate public criticism. The rationale for this criticism varied, and included sanitary, religious, scientific, and political objections.

For some parents, the smallpox vaccination itself induced fear and protest because of the direct contact with infected dirty tissue. Some objectors, including the local clergy, believed that the vaccine was “unchristian” because it came from an animal. For other anti-vaccinators, their discontent with the smallpox vaccine reflected their general distrust in medicine and in Jenner’s ideas about the way infectious disease spread. Suspicious of the vaccine’s efficacy, some sceptics alleged that smallpox resulted from decaying matter in the atmosphere, not from other infected material. Lastly, many people objected to vaccination because they believed it violated their personal liberty, a tension that worsened as the government developed mandatory vaccine policies. And what does the further history show us?

The Vaccination Act of 1853 ordered mandatory vaccination for infants up to 3 months old in the UK, and the Act of 1867 extended this age requirement to 14 years, adding penalties for vaccine refusal. The laws were met with immediate resistance from citizens who demanded the right to control their bodies and those of their children.The Anti-Vaccination League and the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League formed in response to the mandatory laws, and numerous anti-vaccination journals sprang up.

The town of Leicester was a particular hotbed of anti-vaccine activity and the site of many anti-vaccine rallies. The local paper described the details of a rally: “An escort was formed, preceded by a banner, to escort a young mother and two men, all of whom had resolved to give themselves up to the police and undergo imprisonment in preference to having their children vaccinated…The three were attended by a numerous crowd…Three hearty cheers were given for them, which were renewed with increased vigour as they entered the doors of the police cells.” The Leicester Demonstration March of 1885 was one of the most notorious anti-vaccination demonstrations. There, 80,000-100,000 anti-vaccinators lead an elaborate march, complete with banners, a child’s coffin, and an effigy of Jenner.

Such demonstrations and general vaccine opposition lead to the development of a commission designed to study vaccination. In 1896 the commission ruled that vaccination protected against smallpox, but suggested removing penalties for failure to vaccinate. The Vaccination Act of 1898 removed penalties and included a “conscientious objector” clause, so that parents who did not believe in vaccination’s safety or efficacy could obtain an exemption certificate.

Toward the end of the 19th century, smallpox outbreaks in the United States lead to vaccine campaigns and related anti-vaccine activity. The Anti-Vaccination Society of America was founded in 1879, following a visit to America by leading British anti-vaccinationist William Tebb. Two other leagues, the New England Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League (1882) and the Anti-Vaccination League of New York City (1885) followed. The American anti-vaccinationists waged court battles to repeal vaccination laws in several states including California, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

In 1902, following a smallpox outbreak, the Board of Health of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, mandated all city residents to be vaccinated against smallpox. City resident Henning Jacobson refused vaccination on the grounds that the law violated his right to care for his own body how he knew best. In turn, the city filed criminal charges against him. After losing his court battle locally, Jacobson appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1905 the Court found in the state’s favour, ruling that the state could enact compulsory laws to protect the public in the event of a communicable disease. This was the first U.S. Supreme Court case concerning the power of states in public health law.

Anti-vaccination positions and vaccination controversies are not limited to the past. In the mid 1970s, an international controversy over the safety of the DTP immunization erupted in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. In the United Kingdom opposition resulted in response to a report from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London, alleging that 36 children suffered neurological conditions following DTP immunization. Television documentaries and newspaper reports drew public attention to the controversy. An advocacy group, The Association of Parents of Vaccine Damaged Children (APVDC), also piqued public interest in the potential risks and consequences of DTP.

In response to decreased vaccination rates and three major epidemics of whooping cough (pertussis), the Joint Commission on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI), an independent expert advisory committee in the UK, confirmed the safety of the immunization. Nonetheless, public confusion continued, in part because of diverse opinions within the medical profession. For example, surveys of medical providers in the UK in the late 1970s found that they were reluctant to recommend the immunization to all patients. Additionally, an outspoken physician and vaccine opponent, Gordon Stewart, published a series of case reports linking neurological disorders to DTP, sparking additional debate. In response, the JCVI launched the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES). The study identified every child between 2 and 36 months hospitalized in the UK for neurological illness, and assessed whether or not the immunization was associated with increased risk. NCES results indicated that the risk was very low, and this data lent support to a national pro-immunization campaign. Members of the APVDC continued to argue in court for recognition and compensation, but were denied both due to the lack of evidence linking the DTP immunization with harm.

The U.S. controversy began with media attention on the alleged risks of DTP. A 1982 documentary, DPT: Vaccination Roulette, described alleged adverse reactions to the immunization and minimized the benefits. Similarly, a 1991 book entitled A Shot in the Dark outlined potential risks. As in the UK, concerned and angry parents formed victim advocacy groups, but the counter response from medical organizations, like the Academy of Paediatrics and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, was stronger in the United States. Although the media storm instigated several lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, increased vaccine prices, and caused some companies to stop making DTP, the overall controversy affected immunization rates less than in the UK.

Nearly 25 years after the DTP controversy, England was again the site of anti-vaccination activity, this time regarding the MMR vaccine. In 1998, British doctor Andrew Wakefield recommended further investigation of a possible relationship between bowel disease, autism, and the MMR vaccine. A few years later, Wakefield alleged the vaccine was not properly tested before being put into use. The media seized these stories, igniting public fear and confusion over the safety of the vaccine. The Lancet, the journal that originally published Wakefield’s work, stated in 2004 that it should not have published the paper. The General Medical Council, an independent regulator for doctors in the UK, found that Wakefield had a “fatal conflict of interest.” He had been paid by a law board to find out if there was evidence to support a litigation case by parents who believed that the vaccine had harmed their children. In 2010, the Lancet formally retracted the paper after the British General Medical Council ruled against Wakefield in several areas. Wakefield was struck from the medical register in Great Britain and may no longer practice medicine there. In January 2011, the BMJ published a series of reports by journalist Brian Deer outlining evidence that Wakefield had committed scientific fraud by falsifying data and also that Wakefield hoped to financially profit from his investigations in several ways.

A large number of research studies have been conducted to assess the safety of the MMR vaccine, and none of them has found a link between the vaccine and autism.

Thimerosal, a mercury containing compound used as a preservative in vaccines, has also been the centre of a vaccination and autism controversy. Although there is no clear scientific evidence that small amounts of thimerosal in vaccines cause harm, in July 1999, leading U.S. public health and medical organizations and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated from vaccines as a precautionary measure. In 2001, The Institute of Medicine’s Immunization Safety Review Committee issued a report concluding that there was not enough evidence to prove or disprove claims that thimerosal in childhood vaccines causes autism, attention deficit hypersensitivity disorder, or speech or language delay. A more recent report by the committee “favours rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism”. Even with this finding, some researchers continue to study the possible links between thimerosal and autism. Today, thimerosal is no longer used in most childhood vaccines, though some forms of influenza vaccine available in multi-dose vials may contain the preservative.

Despite scientific evidence, concerns over thimerosal have lead to a public “Green Our Vaccines” campaign, a movement to remove “toxins” from vaccines, for fear that these substances lead to autism. Celebrity Jenny McCarthy, her advocacy group Generation Rescue, and the organization Talk about Curing Autism (TACA) have spearheaded these efforts.

We can draw two immediate conclusions from this quick scan of historical facts. The first is that studies "proving" the efficacy and /or the safety of vaccines have been used by authorities over and over again to implement more restrictive rules, whilst at the same time these studies never settled the minds of the anti-campaigners. The second conclusion is that eventually, without admitting to have been wrong, the industry "voluntarily" alters their attitude in manufacturing or administering vaccinations.

1. Why are only "official" studies (government and industry) proving safety and efficacy?

2. Why are certain controversial components altered when you have proven them to be innocent?

A rift between words and deeds we also find in the setting up of National Vaccine Injury Compensation Programmes. Vaccines are perfectly safe to use - no admission of any wrong-doing - and yet there is a need for compensation. We have discussed the ins and outs of such schemes in other articles but let's remind ourselves here of some important points in respect to the knowledge about the safety of vaccines.

Always first have a look at the reason why authorities say they introduce anything new. In this case it is to ensure that people who have a genuine claim of unfortunately having been damaged by vaccination to spare them the trouble and the difficulty of getting a court judgement. The authorities felt that it would be unjust for people who had already suffered a great deal to have to go through the other traumatic experience of a court case in order to get justice. How generous of them to consider the poor suffering people and to embrace their plight fully! In reality the rules are a lot less emotional. When the medical profession agrees that the vaccine has caused definite damage then you will be compensated and the manufacturer will not and can not be blamed for that damage. You don't have to go to court; we admit you are right and that the damage was caused by the vaccine. This is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions. Because this is a medical judgement the entire procedure is carried out behind the closed doors of the medical judiciary. When they themselves feel this to be a punishable offence, you will get your compensation. The industry gets off scot-free. The case is closed and can never betalked about or re-opened. In fact, the case has never seen daylight. It never even existed. The industry can happily carry on and the medical profession is not even being told there was a problem. Nobody knows about it, and those that do are sworn to secrecy. The result is a resounding "vaccines are safe" statement.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) was created in the 1980s in the USA, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages as the industry blackmailed government vaccination programmes by stopping production if they were going to have to be responsible for "mishaps" and to have to pay out large sums of compensation. So together with governments in the Western world they worked out a no-fault compensation scheme which allowed governments to continue with their propaganda that they were saving the population from terrible diseases. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act Reporting and Compensation Tables (VIT) list each covered vaccine, its associated adverse events, and the allowable interval from vaccination to onset of event. The rules for filing a petition are strictly governed and shut out a lot of potential claims which would force the authority to look at a much wider picture. Keep it as narrow as you possible can and stick to it rigidly! But show you care!

Examples of compensable injuries are intussusseption within 30 days of receipt of oral rhesus-based rotavirus vaccine, brachial neuritis within 0-28 days of receipt of tetanus toxoid containing vaccines, anaphylaxis within 0-4 hours of receipt of a variety of vaccines, and so on. The VIT is subject to review by DHHS, and vaccine injuries may be added to and removed from the tables depending on the best available evidence. Seizure disorder after DPT vaccination, which was the cause of many successful lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers before the NVICP, was removed from the list of compensable events in 1995 because of lack of evidence supporting a link. Don't forget that in this setup the medical authority finances and promotes the industry and sits in judgement over who will be compensated for the damage caused by the same industry. The medical profession has been given the power to protect its industry in spite of potent evidence of wrong-doing at the same time when it is upholding the claim to only care for the wellbeing of the population. Has anybody ever pointed out this constitutes a conflict of interest?

The perpetrator is the appointed judge.

Since 1988, over 20,018 petitions have been filed with the NVICP. Over a 30-year time period, 17,536 petitions have been adjudicated, with 6,276 of those determined to be compensable, while 11,260 were dismissed. Total compensation paid during that time period of the programme is approximately $4 billion, which is roughly on only one third of the petitions accepted for judgement by the medical authority. Compensation payments from NVICP have averaged $782,136 per successful claim through 2011, with an additional $113 million dispersed to pay attorney fees and legal costs (the act awards attorney fees and costs for unsuccessful claims provided that the litigants bring their claims in good faith and upon a reasonable basis, as well as for successful claims). Compensation for a death resulting from vaccination is capped at $250,000.

The Health Resources & Services Administration has just released (November 2018) the new figures reflecting payouts amounting to $4 billion. Using the government's own conclusion that only 1% of all vaccine injuries are reported this figure is indeed just the tip of the iceberg.

Figures of paid out compensation are not always as easy to come by as it is in the USA. For the United Kingdom a figure is mentioned of £3.5 million for the period between 1997 and 2004, which is a far cry from money spent in the USA. However, in 2005 there was a problem with the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine causing narcolepsy, which lead to the quiet and spontaneous withdrawal of the vaccine from the market. Although no link was "proven" and no link was admitted it was the medical profession themselves who took this step and surely this points in the direction of "Houston, we have a problem". It is said that in the UK that year alone compensation was paid out to the figure of $90 million. In Norway they admitted paying out $13 million. You would have thought that would be it, but guess what? In 2009 there was a problem with a flu vaccine against Mexican flu. The problem was narcolepsy and the vaccine was Pandemrix!! In 2014 the Dutch government set aside 5 million euro to fund the compensation claims for this disaster, although they mentioned it could easily become double that figure. And just to show how medical authorities are carrying on as if nothing has happened, in 2011 Swedish researchers found that Pandemrix caused a 4x increase in the number of children with narcolepsy, but to this day no blame goes to the industry.

Children’s Health Defence recently called attention to a glaring example of the NVICP’s pro-industry and anti-vaccine-injured bias. In 2007 and 2008, DOJ attorneys exhibited “highly unethical and appallingly consequential official misconduct” during an Omnibus Autism Proceeding (OAP) orchestrated to determine the fate of 5,400 families who had filed claims for vaccine-induced autism. The potential value of the claims exceeded $100 billion - an amount that “would have bankrupted the compensation programme many times over.” HHS’s Department of Justice lawyers, under pressure to deprive petitioners of their rightful relief, successfully achieved that aim through allegedly fraudulent means. In September 2018, Children’s Health Defence Chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rolf Hazlehurst (parent of one of the vaccine-injured children involved in the OAP) requested that the DOJ Inspector General and Congress investigate this fraud and obstruction of justice by HHS and DOJ officials.

By anyone’s accounting, the $4 billion paid out to date by the NVICP is an attention-getting amount of money. However, that amount pales in comparison to the billions of dollars’ worth of autism claims that the vaccine court unfairly dismissed. According to HHS, moreover, “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported,” and studies confirm that many health providers are unfamiliar with the system for reporting vaccine injuries. The shocking underreporting of vaccine injuries also fails to account for the fact that one in six individuals who experience an adverse event following immunization (AEFI) have a recurrence with subsequent vaccination, often rated as more severe than the initial AEFI. If even a small percentage of these unreported and recurrent vaccine injuries were brought forward for compensation, the entire NVICP house of cards - and the CDC’s deceptive claims of unassailable vaccine safety - would crumble.

Instead, whether intended or not, the end result of the 1986 Act and the NVICP has been to create a “gold rush” environment that encourages manufacturers to develop even more vaccines, while conveniently exempting them from liability for the injuries and deaths that result from their powerful immune-system-altering products. With no incentive to make vaccines safe and a large and lucrative market guaranteed by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood vaccine schedule - as well as a growing effort to foist unnecessary and dangerous vaccines on adults - vaccine manufacturers appear to have it made. The public and vaccine safety advocates must continue to remind the government that the approximately 6,300 claims that have been compensated over the NVICP’s 30-year history represent the very tip of the iceberg.

But the truth is you can say whatever you want. As long as the medical system is allowed to operate outside the law of the land nothing will change!

Industry without liability towards the people is nothing but a loose cannon.

How can anybody know what is the truth in a world where so much conflicting evidence is being brought forward? Well, just ask yourself the question: When vaccines are perfectly safe, why do the authority need a scheme that pays out compensation money for serious damage caused by vaccines?

But all of this could still be justifiable if vaccines were effective in reducing and ending infectious diseases. They tell us they are, but how do they know? They test them rigorously. How do they know what to test and how to test it?

It all starts with assuming there is a good chance the vaccine works against a certain disease. It all starts with the dogma vaccines prevent diseases.

In the preclinical trials the vaccine gets tested on tissue culture and on animals. Scientists know that animal testing doesn't provide any answers on human reactions to the same exposures as various species have various reaction patterns and there is no extrapolation possible between the different animals and between animals and humans. Nor does in vitro provide answers for in vivo.

Furthermore, the industry will study which preservatives or stabilizers to add so that the vaccine doesn't break down and whether any adjuvants are necessary to generate a strong enough immune response. In truth, vaccine researches have known for sixty years that when they do not add any irritant, a toxic substance, no immune response can be demonstrated!

When these tests are satisfactory, a sponsor applies for the right to set up clinical trials. Human volunteers test the vaccine in what is called human trials. Selected healthy adults are hand-picked to become vaccinated in very controlled conditions, so nobody gets ill. If you do, those results will be excluded from the trial because there already "was something wrong" with you.

Once these tests have "proven" the vaccine is safe, hundreds of volunteers will now be inoculated and information about side-effects is gathered. Here we talk about immediate side-effects that show up within the testing period with is generally about two weeks.

After this testing phase the vaccine is compared with older and different vaccines on efficiency in the public domain. If vaccines are supposed to protect against diseases, how long is your observation period in this testing phase? How long do you keep watching to see whether the disease occurs or not? Three months? Three years? Or should it be ten years or a lifetime?

Medical authorities check the test results themselves. They inspect the factories and in doing so ensure safety and potency of the vaccine. No independent authority gets a look in.

They say the whole process can take up to 10 years.

When this entire process can take up to ten years and the testing and trial periods are said to take anything between eight and ten years, I wonder how long they take to observe the effects of the vaccine in comparison with other existing vaccines? How long will they take when there are no other vaccines to compare the effects with? The effects of vaccines are tested on the public, just like other drugs and procedures are, and there is never a problem with it unless you actually no longer can hide the problems. First it is perfectly safe, and then it gets taken of the market.

Have you ever wondered why no vaccine is said to give you a lasting immunity? Does this mean that in time they always record the vaccinated person to become infected?

The standard benchmark for scientific testing is the double-blind trial whereby one group is given the medicine and the other group a placebo and neither the doctor nor the patient knows which has been used. In vaccine testing the medical profession has abandoned the double-blind trials on the basis that it is ethically indefensible not to vaccinate. Hence, the dogma vaccines prevent diseases rules the entire procedure. In fact, they are allowed to begin using vaccinations without knowledge of long-term effects and possible dangers, whereby vulnerable human beings are being used to find out this information.

Passing through the entire development and production stages following their own official guidelines it is estimated that the time required for this process is not ten years but more likely around twenty years and the financial investment needed is at least one billion dollars. It might serve you to look at how quickly the latest vaccines come onto the market. How much time elapses between the idea of the vaccine and the vaccine actually becoming available?

The first HPV vaccine became available in 2006, after it had been "proven" to be safe. Apart from all the stories about serious and dangerous side-effects and the discussions about whether or not these are real side-effects or coincidental disease occurrences, there are a few other facts that we can draw your attention to.

A conservative watchdog organisation in the US, Judicial Watch, received documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “revealing that its National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has awarded $5,877,710 dollars to 49 victims in claims made against the highly controversial HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines”.

In 2010 in India, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) ordered the country’s health ministry to suspend the HPV vaccine programme after reports of four deaths and 120 complications.

In Japan, the vaccine is no longer recommended by the government , although it is still available. There is also a lot of controversy around the subject in Denmark, with many parents and doctors raising questions.

An eight-month investigation by Slatefound the major Gardasil trials were flawed from the outset, and that regulators allowed unreliable methods to be used to test the vaccine’s safety.

In an internal 2014 EMA report about Gardasil 9 obtained through a freedom-of-information request, senior experts called the company’s approach “unconventional and suboptimal” and said it left some “uncertainty” about the safety results. EMA trial inspectors made similar observations in another report, noting that Merck’s procedure was “not an optimal method of collecting safety data, especially not systemic side effects that could appear long after the vaccinations were given.”

Merck, the manufacturer of the HPV vaccine Gardasil, has stated in their Gardasil Product Information Leaflet, that there are over 45 side-effects which may be experienced after Gardasil injections and that this occurs in 3.2% of those injected and that 1/3 of these are serious (life-threatening) side effects.

Scientifically what is required is to demonstrate a causal link between the alleged disease cause, the germ, and the actual disease. Both being present in the same person at the same time establishes a link but not a cause. If there is a causal link, one of the features is that both occurrences happen every time. One doesn't go without the other. It might interest you to know that a causal link has never been found in any of our known infectious diseases!

So, what have we learned?

Opposition against vaccination has been present since the very beginning and the war is still waged on the same issues: safety and efficacy. What makes you think you are going to stop vaccinations now when you haven't managed it in two hundred years? Unless you change tactics. Unless science could prove that there never is a need for protection against an infectious attack from the outside.

It's your lucky day! Science has established time and time again over the last twohundred years that germs occur spontaneously inside the diseased tissue in an effort by the organism to clean up the disease and get back to health.

Anecdotal information about individual reactions surrounding vaccinations are creating fear amongst the population and are being dismissed by the authorities. By making a successful claim, which is a rare event, you help the authorities to suppress reports of serious problems. When the perpetrator is appointed judge over the claim, the outcome is pretty predictable. By no longer allowing the medical profession to operate outside the law you can hold them directly responsible for their actions and the procedures they use. This will ensure that the industry will become accountable as well, and just as it is for every ordinary citizen, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry will have to carry their punishment personally.

Test results depend on the way the test has been set up as well as on many other variables such as choosing the participants, deciding on the rules of the testing, how to collect the data, how to interpret the data, what conclusions must be drawn. The medical profession does not accept the scientific truth (discovered a hundred years ago) that the observer influences the observed and that no test can ever give an "objective" result. Testing, in the laboratory as well as on animals, brings us no useful information about the truth for humans. No testing on one human being can give us any information about the effects of the same procedure on another human being. Every observation is valid and is directly linked to the individual and the circumstances. Hence, no procedure can ever be effective or safe for all.

Giving people the right to validate their own lives and making whatever is available subject to the decision of the individual is the only real way forward in the direction of health. Freedom of choice is all that is required. Hand people the right to make their own decisions and give them the freedom to decide what they believe is best for them. Physics has proven this to be the truth.

Shall I compress it into the three demands we need to put forward?

Make medical science part of science. - Matter is energy, in its material substance and in its function. Germs are a result of the disease not the cause.

Everyone equal in the eyes of the law.

Freedom of choice.

Or as the French may say: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. (Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood)

If you trult want to reclaim your power and take responsibility for your own life you do need